Shanghai and Beijing, China (First Five Days)

Ni hao!

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself boarding a plane to Shanghai, China with fellow 13itches member Andrew and our friend Haily for a ten-day trip around China. A trip that revolved around plenty of shopping, eating, drinking, private jokes, arm-biting (??), random quotes, exploring and lots of sight-seeing! =)

Read on for a little recount of the first five days of the holiday where three Aussies took on the cities of Shanghai and Beijing with no idea of what they were in for!

After a restless ten hour flight, we arrived in Shanghai late Friday evening where fellow 13tiches member, Ann, was waiting for us at the arrival gates with a “Welcome to Spankhai! What Up!” sign that she had stayed up making for us! haha The sole purpose of this trip was to visit Ann and see and hear all about her second life in Shanghai.

With lots of excitement of being in a new country and much to catch up on, we ignored the fact that neither of us had had any sleep, dropped off our bags at Ann’s and decided to stay up and out on our first night in China. We headed for a local place for dinner where the only thing on the menu was crawfish! Cheap and distinctively different, we dug in and washed it down with equally cheap beers and fake orange juice haha

After dinner, came lots of drinks and dancing at I Love Shanghai (seriously) and Muse, respectively. It was defiinitely a great way to kick things off the first night of our holiday!

The next morning, I woke up with no voice – uh oh! Despite that though, I soldiered on and we took the metro (so much better than City Rail) to People’s Square, where we found ourselves walking through a gorgeous park with a “marriage market” not so subtly hidden within it. It was pretty crazy, but hey, if you find yourself reaching that age and wanting to look for a potential life partner, jump on a plane to Shanghai and you may just find your future husband/wife! You gotta have a great profile though – there are standards to be met!

Shopping, shopping and shopping: that’s what our first two full days consisted of. The Chinese really do love to shop though with huge malls and with everything being so ‘cheap cheap’, we couldn’t help but open our wallets and ‘spend spend spend’. On the Sunday night, however, we were invited out to Atanu, a rooftop party on a lighthouse overlooking the entire Shanghai skyline at The Bund. It was incredibly stunning and definitely a night we’ll always remember.

Knowing someone who’s lived in Shanghai for a few months, we took advantage of her knowledge for the best eats and shopping destinations for the Monday morning. Cheap and delicious dumplings at Pacman and then we were off to discover parts of Pudong and the local markets.

That night, we boarded an overnight train to enter the capital city of Beijing for 48 hours. Did the Chinese know what they were in for with four crazy Australians roaming their streets??! We arrived early and headed straight for Tian’AnMen Square and the Forbidden City. It didn’t matter to us that we had to lug around our backpacks full of our belongings because the walk and experience in itself was pretty spectacular.

Afterwards, we realised our hostel was only minutes away from the Forbidden City, so we skipped the offers from the taxis and walked over to the Beijing Jade International Youth Hostel, quickly checked in and headed over to the Beijing Zoo to see the Giant Pandas before they closed! We were there solely to see the pandas and were very happy to see them awake and entertaining the crowds.

Next thing on our to-do list was to find a baller restaurant for some great and authentic Peking Duck. Following the recommendation from one of our tour-guide books, we ended up at Beijing Da Dong Peking Duck Restaurant, one hour before the kitchen was due to close! (We’re not great with time management, are we?) Though the restaurant was probably not the most popular in the city, the duck was so delicious, we ended up ordering two! Knowing we had a big day ahead of us though, we headed for home after dinner for some much needed sleep.

With an organised tour under our belts and plenty of water in our backpacks, we woke up the next day ready to take on the Great Wall of China. For me personally, this was the highlight of the whole trip and what an achievement it was! We headed straight for the Mutianyu Great Wall and went up to our proposed section via cable cars where we were meant to climb Platforms 14 to 20. Though it was a little rigorous at times, it was the distance from Platform 19 to 20 that proved to be the most difficult as it was the steepest, but because we were so close, we just had to keep going until we reached the top – no matter how long it would take us.

Eventually the four of us did reach the top, tired and out of breath but the view was so stunning, it was well worth it!! If you ever go to China, the one thing I recommend that you do is, go to Beijing and climb the Great Wall. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Through the tour, our tired feet were then treated to massages and we also received a free medical consultation following the traditional Chinese practices which was done simply by checking our pulse. It was quite bizarre, in all honesty, ’cause unlike the Western tradition of the patient telling the doctor what was wrong with them, the Chinese doctors knew exactly what was wrong, all by just feeling our pulse and asking how old we were! It was pretty amazing ’cause they were pretty much on point with everyone in the room.

Feeling relaxed after our massages, we headed back to the hostel to rest before heading out to enjoy the Beijing nightlift on our last night there, which consisted mainly of eating and a spot of shopping. After some spicy hot pot for dinner, we headed down to the “crazy food street”, highly recommended by our friend Mike to try out the strange things the Chinese had to offer. We walked down the street and saw everything from fried seahorse (although they called it seadog lol) and sheep kidneys to centipedes and bee cocoons! The four of us were brave enough to try something weird each: scorpion, cicada, snake skin and fried starfish. Surprisingly, the scorpion was the best out of them all and tasted like soft-shell crab! Mmm.. scorpion